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Is This the End of Denuvo?

Do you hate DRM? Have you ever experienced trying to play a single player game that demands you connect to the internet to verify that you indeed own the game you are trying to play? That’s DRM in action and it is an annoying experience that hardly affects pirates. Don’t get us wrong, we don’t condone piracy. But case in point, DRM does not address piracy. Even in the case of Denuvo, DRM only defers piracy and does not prevent it. DRM only makes the legitimate game owners jump hoops.

Denuvo is a company that specializes in adding DRM to video games. Publishers hire Denuvo to “protect” their game from pirates and they’ve done a good job for quite some time. Denuvo-protected games seemed ironclad. Denuvo was able to delay the games from being cracked. It took months before hackers were able to crack games with Denuvo protection. However, it would seem that the hackers have the DRM experts all figured out. Denuvo games are now being hacked in just one day. Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18 were actually cracked in under 8 hours.

Many video game publishers have been known to remove Denuvo from their games after their games have been cracked. Once a crack has been released, DRM is pretty much useless and just becomes a bother for those that own the games legitimately.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War was the latest Denuvo-protected game that was cracked just one day after it was released. On top of that, people were already able to use Cheat Engine to get unlimited loot boxes. Take that you greedy bastards! Notably, the game has become unpopular for being a single player game that introduced microtransactions.

The question right now, with the recent failure of Denuvo to deter hackers from cracking the games they protect, will video game publishers still use Denuvo? Or will gamers be able to once again experience DRM-free gaming? Who are we kidding? DRM-free will probably still be a pipe-dream.

Reuben is the co-founder, writer/editor, and developer of Geek Portal. A closet geek, he started gaming at the age of 5 with the Famicom. He plays all kinds of video games, but especially loves JRPGs. Suikoden 2 has a special place in this gamer’s heart. He also likes to watch anime and collect anime/video game figures.